Glossary

E) Minor Groups of Verbs.

Several minor groups of verbs can be referred neither to strong nor to weak verbs.

The most important group of these verbs were so-called “preterite-presents” or “past-present” verbs. Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives.

The verbs were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong verbs: the forms of the 1st and 3rd p. sg were identical and had no ending - yet, unlike strong verbs, they had the same root-vowel in all the persons; the pl. had a different grade of ablaut similarly with strong verbs.

In the Past the preterite-presents were inflected like weak verbs: the dental suffix plus the endings -e, -est, -e. The new Infinitives sculan, cunnan were derived from the plural form. The interchanges of root-vowels can be traced to the same gradation series as were used in the strong verbs.

In OE were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE ā3an, a3; cunnan, can; durran, dear; sculan, sceal; ma3an, mæ3; mōtan, mōt (NE owe, ought; can, could; dare; shall, should; may; must). Most of the preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive that followed the preterite-present.

Among the verbs of the minor groups there were several anomalous verbs with irregular forms.

OE willan was an irregular verb with the meaning of volition and desire; it resembled the preterite-presents in meaning and function, as it indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by the Infinitive.

Willan had a past tense form wolde. Eventually willan became a modal verb, and together with sculan developed into auxiliary.

Some verbs combined the features of weak and strong verbs.

Two OE verbs were suppletive: OE 3ān, whose Past tense was built from a different root: 3ān – eōde – 3e-3ān (NE go); and beon, wesan: wesan - wæs (NE be).

Analytical languages – the languages in which the grammatical meanings are expressed by the auxiliary words, word order and prepositions.

Anomalous verbs – verbs with irregular forms.

Grammatical category –– the term, denoting the expression of grammatical meanings, with the help of grammatical means.

Inflected parts of speech –– the parts of speech that possess endings and can be declined or conjugated.

Neutralisation –– the loss of phonetically or grammatically relevant features (simplification, merging of some forms).

Oblique cases –– all the cases except of the Nominative case.

Paradigm –– the set of all the usable forms of a word.

Preterite-presents – the verbs that express the result of the preceding action, which is considered as a present action. They were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong verbs and in the Past like weak verbs.

Strong verbs – they can be compared with NE irregular verbs because formed their stems by means of vowel gradation and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs vowel gradation was accompanied by consonant interchanges.

Suppletive verbs – their paradigms are made up of several roots (NE go – went – gone; Russian идти – шёл; Ukrainian йти – йшов).

Synthetic languages – the languages in which the grammatical meanings are shown with the help of different inflections.

Weak verbs – they can be compared with NE regular verbs because as usual derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix –d- or –t-.

Literature

A) Principal:

1. Історія англійської мови / Навчальний посібник для самостійної роботи студентів-філологів, що вивчають англійську мову як фах. – Полтава, 2002. – C. 40-54.

2. Rastorgueva T.A. A History of English. – M., 1983. – Chapter IX (P. 92-124).

B) Supplementary:

1. Залесская Л.Д. Пособие по истории английского языка для заочных отделений факультетов английского языка педагогических институтов. – М., 1984. – С. 24-42.

2. Иванова И.П., Чахоян Л.П., Беляева Т.М. История английского языка… – С. 100-108, 112-116, 124-128, 133-151.

3. Аракин В.Д. История английского языка: Учеб.пособие для студентов пед. ин-тов. – М.: Просвещение,1985. – Глава III. – С.45-88.

4. Ильиш Б.А. История английского языка. (На англ. яз.) Учебник для студентов фак. иностр. яз. пед. ин-тов. – Л.,1972. – C. 63-110.

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